Quick Outrage: Fire Dept. Wants to Charge Extra for Moving Fatties

The Lancashire (England) Fire and Rescue Service has experienced a “sharp rise” in the number of calls asking them to help other services move extremely obese people — they’ve doubled in the past year! — so they figure they ought to be getting some more money for the heavy lifting.

This means they got 8 calls like that in the last year, as opposed to 4 the previous year. My god! Soon, there will be more fat human beings in need of transportation than there will be kittens up trees!

Hey, you know what else is a majorly expensive pain in the ass that endangers the health of firefighters? Putting out fires. Just imagine all the time and resources firefighters would have available if they never had to do that. Why, they could even get other jobs entirely.

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I saw this article too. And how magnanimous are they being, since they aren’t charging the fat people, they’re charging the hospitals, nursing homes, police and other agencies who need the help moving those fat people. Because heaven forbid those hospitals and nursing homes etc should train their people to move fatties, or have enough help/proper equipment on hand to move the fatties. Eight times a year is just too much, y’all, I mean really, having to help a fat person get to the doctor/hospital whatever once every 6.5 weeks is above and beyond the call of duty? Then I suggest they find a different line of work.
And they haven’t decided if they’re going to charge a flat rate above a certain weight or charge by the pound. FFS!

I find it gobsmacking that it’s liberals who are consistently being cast as whiners in this fuckin’ world, when shit like this is going on.

I tell ya, I’ll take their bullshit seriously when they start complaining about how impossible it is for EMTs and the like to serve 350-pound professional athletes. Until then, it’s all the same old bullshit: “Eww, I don’t wanna touch someone I think is ugly.”

Fuck you and get over yourself. Either do your job, or find a different job.

If those firefighters are going to charge more for moving fat people 8 times a year, then nurses and nurses’ aides should get paid a million dollars a year. Aside from all of the hard, awesome work they do, they often have to lift and move patients around everyday. And that shit is back-breaking even when the patient weighs 100 pounds (as many of them did on the oncology ward my mom worked).

From what I saw of my mother’s experience as a nurse’s aide at a hospital and nursing home, few healthcare facilities have the proper equipment, training, or staff for lifting ANY human being.

Kate–I guessed by the language that this woman was probably a world champion at Fat Hate Bingo many times over…I’m sad to hear that my thinking was correct. I’m sure if you did a post on her, the comments would be out of control.

I am continually amazed by people’s bigotry. Between this horrible story about the fire department (ZOMG WE HAD TO SEE EIGHT FAT PEOPLEZ!!!!1111!!) and that other gem, I am about ready to call it a day.

Good point, Thorn, how it’s really not about the weight. Do EMT workers charge more when someone’s injured in a football or rugby match? If a Japanese team comes to do demonstration sumo, will they charge extra if one of the sumotori needs transport?

Okay, you know what’s even more completely fucknutty about this….earlier this year, I was holed up in my bed for a week, alone in the apartment, delirious with fever and pain, vomiting nearly constantly, and possessed of a kidney infection I didn’t yet know I had. I should have gone to the ER, and within a few more days, I indeed wound up there (via taxi, taken by my mother, who had travelled 350 km to take care of me), and was immediately checked into the surgical ward, told by the doc that it was a “life and death situation.”

The thing is, one night, lying alone in bed, it was so bad, I came very close to calling the ambulance several times. I was scared. But I never called, partly because I was convinced it couldn’t possibly be that serious…but also, partly, wayyyy in the back of my mind, and in my delirium, I was embarrassed, ashamed, and worried about what “they” would think of my fat self (and by then, my totally dirty, messy, stinky, week-long-bedsick self), and what would happen when they tried to get me out of my apartment.

Of COURSE it was stupid. Had I been in my right mind, I would never have thought that way. But yes, I was delirious. (I was also having constant, very Ingmar Bergman-esque dreams.) What might I have thought if I had read an article like this, or the one about the paramedics, beforehand? (111 kg? That’s less than 250 lbs – big fat deal!) What might somebody else think, if they’ve read articles like this, are not possessed of much sense of self-acceptance yet, and wind up in as much danger as I was in? It frightens me to think about it. (ODDLY enough, nobody had any problems moving me around in hospital, including when I was dead to the world for three separate surgeries.)

I don’t know what the procedure is for fire departments in England. But I do know a bit about how the U.S. operates. I was a volunteer EMT briefly several years ago. My father was a volunteer fire fighter when I was younger, and my mother and brother both work as EMTs.

Firefighter tests vary by state and departments, but generally you have to lift a 175-pound dummy up several flights of stairs and then back down. By yourself. Wearing about 40 pounds of gear.

If one is physically capable of doing this, I don’t see what the problem is for a crew, which usually averages four people in smaller departments and more in larger departments, to lift a 300 or even 500-pound person onto a stretcher.